


The Fisher King

by sunbreaksdown



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood Drinking, Dream Bubbles, F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbreaksdown/pseuds/sunbreaksdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years in the future (many), Kanaya visits Vriska in the dream bubbles that have made her castle a prison, unable to give her what she needs.</p><p>(Vriska has grown with the cracks in the stone, like moss in stagnant water, and her own horns jut out unnaturally, blades raised against the air. Slowly, very slowly, Vriska's fingertips begin to tap impatiently against the edges of the throne, but her eyes do not blink, her lips do not twitch, and her chest does not rise. If there is to be colour found in Vriska Serket any longer, then it is in the wound framed by a sun she will not allow herself to see, blood still bright blue.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fisher King

         _I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
         in secret, between the shadow and the soul. _

*

     Even in ruin, the castle is fit for a king.

     It has been created in accordance with a perfect plan, foundations first. Spiralling staircases course like veins deep below, running as jagged roots into the very earth, clutching, clinging. As if the enormity, the grandiose, of the structure leaves it unevenly balanced, likely to tumble; as if blocks of stone, a handful of mountain in and of themselves, could fall to the mercy of the wind.

     There are winding passages, great halls, hidden pathways, chambers for all and sundry, and yet no one beyond the keep's master has ever lived there. Hallways go unwalked, feasts are never held, secrets remain kept, and silence echoes in the stillness of the air. To step into the castle is to believe that the whole world sleeps, that inertia has long since claimed the land. The king, perhaps, is no different, having never mustered the energy to subject the lower castes to a life of servitude, and lies in constant slumber.

     Kanaya has been there before many times. Countless times. She has visited the castle while living, traced her fingertips across its walls in her dreams, and now lingers there as she toes the line between immortality and brusque death. It is cold there, not wholly unexpected for the unfinished stone it's made of, and she has lived for too long in the light, the rain, to settle into a facsimile of her home world with anything resembling peace. She does not belong there, and yet she walks the hallways as if she has done so for sweeps that have since broken down into years, reflecting on a different kind of cold.

     It gets in her bones before it ripples chilled waves across her skin. She is a sunny, selfish creature, ever feeding upon a star, and finds the cold, dank dark almost unbearable. But she pushes onwards, because she is on the cusp of no longer being able to take the pressures of the imagined, remembered world around her, and would like so very much to break. Like frozen pools of ice underfoot, cracking as a sole presses down. So cold that the shattered pieces clack together like two bricks made to clap.

     But as ever, it is not the building that draws her close, not the building that concerns her. It is merely a maze she already has the map to, and Kanaya keeps her head high as she goes, ignoring the dark shapes she entertains in her mind's eye as jumping from one shadow to the next. More than anything, she knows that there is nothing for her to fear, no authority to bring its fist down upon her, cold metal sparking against the tips of horns. This may well be a castle, but it is not the heart of a Kingdom; it is all make-believe, and the whim of a once very small girl.

     The entrance to the throneblock is her first and only obstacle. It takes all of the strength unnaturally coursing through blocked arteries and sparking nerves to order the oaken doors to budge so much as an inch when she throws the whole of her weight against them, shoulder first. It is the same tussle every time: she pushes and she pushes, and the hinges creak and groan, as if they have not been through this a dozen times already. Rust resides there, though Kanaya has long since given up on abrading it away. It only finds new ways to spread itself further still with each successive scouring.

     And once she is inside the chamber, Kanaya distracts herself further. She makes certain to close the doors behind her, and pulling is always far more difficult than pushing. Telling herself that she only means to gather courage, Kanaya stands with her back to the throne, nails tracing the outline of the shapes seared into the steel handle. It is intricate, frighteningly so, and she knows that by committing it to her own memory she alerts the owner of the bubble to the complexity of the world around her, and threatens to throw the whole illusion into disarray.

     She would tell herself to hurry, but no clocks tick here. Time is hardly of the essence. When Kanaya does approach the throne, she has lost count of how many times she's held her breath, and she bows her head. Not in submission, as if acceding to authority, but in order to have one last chance to keep her eyes cast towards the ground. The castle is cold and she is no knight, but when she approaches the heart of the block, Kanaya knows where her gaze will be drawn.

     To Vriska, sat on the throne, hands wrapped around the ends of the arms. As if she has been carved into it, great stone golem that she is. This is her afterlife, her eternity to do with as she pleases, but remorse wells up inside of Kanaya regardless, seeing her as unmoving as all that. Even if Vriska spends half of forever making a statue of herself, Kanaya holds as a mantra, then she will still have forever left over to indulge herself in.

     And that's the funny thing she's found about death. It doesn't stop anyone from moving, in some ways. There is a permanence to it that seems misplaced, even absurd, in the context of bubbles, and even now, Kanaya waits for Vriska to return. To abdicate her throne, to leave through the glossy shell of a bubble with her. But death doesn't stop Vriska from moving in small, unimportant ways; it just means that she can't be where she feels she belongs.

     This hulking, empty castle has never been her home. Echoes barely belong within its stone walls. Vriska was forced to become ward of her own monarchy from the moment she scampered to the surface, and since then — well, heavy is the head. When death, her death, was novel, Kanaya would find her traversing her hive as if each twist and turn was a surprise to her, and they would spend the hours upon hours of sleep that night would afford Kanaya pulling one piece of ill-gotten treasure from the next. Kanaya would remove any tarnish from ancient crowns and sceptres, and Vriska would wear them proudly, as if her whole life wasn't behind her.

     Yet the time for that has been and gone. Now Vriska wears nothing beyond what she was dressed in the day she died. She sits for so long in her throne that dust gathers in every crease and fold, turning the sunset-orange of the sky's lowest point grey. She becomes her own suit of armour, the knight that Kanaya can't. But she does not look as she did the day she died. The embodiment of her afterlife has given her the space needed for her mind to grow, heavy with remorse, and her body has changed along with it.

     The castle too is not as it once was. The ceilings arch all the more, in spite of how Kanaya's horns rush with growth. Vriska has grown with the cracks in the stone, like moss in stagnant water, and her own horns jut out unnaturally, blades raised against the air. Slowly, very slowly, Vriska's fingertips begin to tap impatiently against the edges of the throne, but her eyes do not blink, her lips do not twitch, and her chest does not rise. If there is to be colour found in Vriska Serket any longer, then it is in the wound framed by a sun she will not allow herself to see, blood still bright blue.

     Kanaya stands before the throne, hands on Vriska's shoulders. She doesn't kneel; she'll never kneel, though she lowers her head, lips pressing to Vriska's forehead. As if shaken from a trance, Vriska grunts, twitches in a way she can't control, and for one wonderful, all-consuming moment, it's like having Vriska back again. Not this wounded king of an empty land who's hollowed herself out, but the ridiculous, self-centred, offensive girl that Kanaya has wished to have alongside her in the world of waking so many times.

     Vriska's eyes roll back in her skull, and the light from Kanaya's skin makes her irises burn, cerulean-blue. Reaching up, Vriska wraps her arms loosely around Kanaya's waist, dust clouding the air. Kanaya imagines she can hear the sound of armour creaking with Vriska's movements, and then imagines that Vriska holds her like that for some reason beyond having believed that she wasn't even going to return again. Her visits become less and less frequent, and she feels no less guilty for reassuring herself that Vriska has forever.

     “Hey, Fussyfangs,” Vriska mumbles, voice thick with sleep. When she feels particularly eager to delude herself, Kanaya operates under the impression that Vriska dreams of her place in the waking world Kanaya now inhabits, a recreation of Earth, safe for trolls and humans alike. “Hungry?”

     Kanaya's fingers thread through the heavy, tangled strands of Vriska's shadow-black hair. Her hands threaten to become lost several times. For as long and as well as she can, Kanaya ignores the question, keeps Vriska close, and hushes her over and over, though she never once complains. She'd feel more like the Vriska she once knew if only she'd lash out at her. But this, the asking, the waiting; it's worse than any argument or accusation Vriska would've once conjured up.

     Vriska clings to her tighter and lets out a single heave. A sudden, startled noise, a _haaaah_ , that resolves itself in recollection. She's remembering how to make her heart beat. The cadence of viscera sparked off anew only reminds Vriska how to bleed, and Kanaya feels it seep into the sash wrapped around her middle as she holds Vriska to her chest. None of this is real, insofar as this isn't the only reality that'll ever present itself to Vriska again.

     Vriska is waiting for Kanaya to heal her. She is waiting for her to say or do or even realise something that will heal the would across her heart once and for all. Kanaya's tried, god knows. She's told Vriska how she didn't die because it was just for the world to be void of her; she died because Terezi was a hero, and that there should be space for her to feel proud of that. She's told her that her intentions were good, no matter how rough they may have been, and she's even tried patching the laceration back together, like a torn piece of fabric ready to be stitched up.

     Vriska accepts none of it. Each time Kanaya succeeds in her handiwork, Vriska's reluctance to forgive anyone, least of all herself, makes itself known again.

     It would've been easier if she never accepted the fact that she'd done wrong at any one point of her life.

     And so Kanaya does the only thing she can do, the only thing she's ever been able to do for Vriska: she cleans up the mess she's made. Crouching low (crouching, but never kneeling), Kanaya peels back the makeshift bandage of orange cloth, a robe fit for neither a king nor god, fingertips tracing the ridges where Vriska's ribcage meets in the middle, blood already under her nails. Vriska's fingers snarl in her short hair, and Kanaya knows that she won't be permitted to sleep forever.

     It's messy work. The blood smears across the tip of her nose and her chin first, and she has to flick her tongue out to angle the blood into her throat, though it flows from the wound. She growls under her breath without realising she does so, animalistic, and she would be ashamed, were she not so sated. Vriska allows her to take as much as she can, though it's never enough, and when Kanaya breaks away, for a brief moment, there's a light in Vriska's eye that makes her believe she'll only ever find safety in sleep.

     “—you look dumb, Kanaya,” Vriska tells her with a _tut_ , using a thumb to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth. Some part of Kanaya is narcissistic enough to believe that Vriska means _thank you_ , because the blood has stopped flowing, and the pain has met the same end that all pain inevitably does: its worth has deteriorated for it no longer being experienced.

     On her feet once more, Kanaya extends a hand, but Vriska does not take it. Instead, Kanaya neatly perches herself on the edge of Vriska's lap, arms around her shoulders, and wonders who else comes here. Who else has yet to conveniently forget that Vriska is dead and gone but far from unreachable. It is selfish to wish that she is the only one allowed to step foot inside this castle, this bubble, but Kanaya cannot help but want and want for something she can never have: Vriska in her entirety, happiness and all.

     As she strokes her fingers against Vriska's cheek, across the shell of her ear, Kanaya tells herself that it won't end like this, next time. She won't spend her last moments in the bubble with Vriska leant against her chest, her taste ripe on the tip of her tongue. First things first, she'll ask Vriska to create a sun for her. It'll filter in through the windows, it'll breathe life into the husk of Vriska's memories, and together, they'll see the way arrows of light spear strands of warmth against them.

     She'll take Vriska's hands and pull her from that throne, and tell her that though she can't be the one to heal her, she can be the one to take her into a better place, a better time. A bubble that doesn't fit itself in to the perimeters of a kingless castle, whether that involves seas surging and enemy ships sinking, or a newer memory of Kanaya's own, freely given, where Vriska can make a place for herself in the free world. Vriska can be who she wants to. Vriska can sit around in hundred degree heat next to a cracked open window, wearing nothing but loose-fitting shorts and a scowl as she just can't stop the sweat from forming on her brow. Vriska can have her adventures in the real world, the waking world, and Kanaya will stand by her, no matter what.

     No matter how Vriska complains that she does nothing but meddle and fuss, and treat being supportive as if it's a bad thing. Kanaya will give her anything, a sofa to sleep on, a spare square of wall to beat her fists against in frustration, but it's nothing but a daydream. Because this castle is Vriska's prison, one of her own making; she is a Titan, cheated by her own immortality.

     With a smile that leaves her chest empty and her skin wan, Kanaya kisses her forehead, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth, and remembers a time when she wanted nothing more than for Vriska to pay her heed. But now Vriska depends on her, and her alone, and yet she cannot do what it is she needs her to. She cannot piece her back together, because this is something she needs to accomplish on her own. It is a lesson crafted carefully for her, and soon Kanaya will wake.

     She will wake, and she will convince herself that her life is all it can be. That she only thinks of Vriska when someone makes reference to her, respect and scorn making voices grave in equal measures.

     Kanaya allows herself to glance out of the window. Beyond the silhouettes of the charcoal trees, the embers of a dying sunset burn closer to the ground than the horizon, and for a moment, it's progress. It's _something_. There is usually nothing but black, empty space beyond the castle's walls. But Vriska does not allow the illusion to last for long, and Kanaya lowers her lips to Vriska's ear, and lets her know that it's a start, that it's real progress; that it won't be like this forever, unless Vriska wants it to be.

     Kanaya clings to no wish that revolves around Vriska's life being returned to her. She simply hopes beyond hoping that one day, Vriska will embrace the afterlife presented to her and treat the surface of the endlessly shifting world with the malleability it entails.

     She aches for Vriska to make the most of what little has been freely given to her, to punish herself no longer, but knows that she will never become whole of that wound.

**Author's Note:**

> [XVII](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/xvii-i-do-not-love-you/).


End file.
